1938 in France

Incumbents

• President: Albert Lebrun
• President of the Council of Ministers:
• * until 13 March: Camille Chautemps
• * 13 March-10 April: Léon Blum
• * starting 10 April: Édouard Daladier

  Events

• 1 January – Creation of SNCF, bringing the country's principal railway companies together under government control.
• 14 March – Premier Léon Blum reassures the Czechoslovak government that France will honor its treaty obligations to aid Czechoslovakia in event of German invasion.
• 10 April – Édouard Daladier becomes prime minister of France. He appoints as Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet, an advocate of appeasement.
• 4 September – During the ceremony marking the unveiling of a plaque at Pointe de Grave celebrating Franco-American friendship, American ambassador William Bullitt in a speech states, "France and the United States were united in war and peace".
• 30 September – Munich Agreement is signed by France, Germany, Britain and Italy permitting German annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland.
• 24 October – Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet carries out a major purge of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dismissing or exiling a number of anti-appeasement officials such as Pierre Comert and René Massigli.
• 12 November – Finance Minister Paul Reynaud brings into effect a series of laws aiming at improving French productivity and undoes most of the economic and social laws of the Popular Front.
• 25 November – Bonnet informs Léon Noël, the French ambassador to Poland, that France should find an excuse for terminating the 1921 Franco-Polish alliance.
• 30 November
• *A general strike is called by the French Communist Party to protest the laws of 12 November.
• *Benito Mussolini and his Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano order "spontaneous" demonstrations in the Italian Chamber of Deputies demanding that France cede Tunisia, Nice, Corsica and French Somaliland to Italy, beginning an acute crisis in Franco-Italian relations that lasts until March 1939.

  Sport

• 4 June – 1938 [FIFA World Cup] begins, hosted by France.
• 19 June – World Cup ends, won by Italy.
• 5 July – Tour de France begins.
• 31 July – Tour de France ends, won by Gino Bartali of Italy.

  Births

• 7 January – Roland Topor, illustrator, painter, writer and filmmaker
• 18 February – Louis-Marie Billé, cardinal
• 13 April – Janine Rozier, politician
• 2 July – Marcel Artelesa, international soccer player
• 9 August – Michèle Girardon, actress
• 20 August – Alain Vivien, politician
• 3 September – Liliane Ackermann, community leader, writer, and lecturer
• 23 September – Jean-Claude Mézières, artist and illustrator
• 25 October – Claude Minière, essayist and poet
• 10 November – Claude Serre, cartoonist
• 30 November – Jean Eustache, filmmaker

  Full date unknown

• Michel Pêcheux, philosopher

  Deaths

• 20 January – Émile Cohl, caricaturist, cartoonist and animator
• 21 January – Georges Méliès, filmmaker
• 13 May – Charles Édouard Guillaume, physicist, awarded Nobel Prize in Physics in 1920
• 26 June – Abbie Pratt, golfer
• 4 July – Suzanne Lenglen, tennis player
• 17 July – Robert Wiene, German film director